The logo for Jo Francis. There are two orange squares, one big and one small, that overlap in the corner. The words Jo Francis interrupt the line of the larger square.
An image of a laptop with lots of cartoon letters flying across the screen. On the left side of the image there is an orange rectangle with a grey rectangle layered over the top with orange text reading ‘How to grow your email list by 1000 contacts for £110’ and on the right side of the image there is an orange circle with white text reading ‘Jo Francis’

How to grow your email list by 1000 contacts for £110 ($150)

/ Facebook Ad Tips / By

It’s absolutely the dream, isn’t it!

And it really is 100% possible.

I’m going to talk you through how. 

But I will also counteract by saying it doesn’t always happen like this. 

Grow your email list with Facebook ads

The example I’m going to show you hinges very much on the client showing the right message, to the right audience at the right time. And sometimes getting all the stars to align and for these three elements to be in sync can take a little more tweaking and testing.

But, this really does show what a powerful tool Facebook ads can be when it comes to promoting your lead magnet. 

This is the new contacts added to my clients email list in just the last month

My client, Julie Cluley from Julie Helps You Help Your Dog, is a highly experienced and well established dog trainer but, as with many businesses throughout the last year, she had to find a way to pivot her business and take her offering online. 

She designed a six week online course for new puppy owners, Puppy Love, using her very personalised method of training. 

Having already established a strong Facebook following, with both a page and a group, alongside plenty of word of mouth referrals, Julie was instantly able to start selling the course and establishing an income. 

However, she was also very aware that she needed to continue to build an online audience in order to maintain a steady stream of new clients. 

And this is where we started to talk about lead magnets and Facebook ads. 

Create a lead magnet that is perfect for your audience

Knowing her market inside out allowed Julie to quickly establish the issues new puppy owners were facing, and she created an in-depth workbook that would instantly offer solutions and start to create harmony, in what can often be a chaotic environment (I speak from experience – life with a new puppy is definitely not easy!!). 

With many of my clients, the first stage of Facebook ads is often very focussed on awareness – driving traffic, video engagement, building Facebook page growth – turning cold audiences into warm audiences. 

However, in this instance, the value being offered in the workbook was so high, that I was confident that we could use the lead magnet to build awareness AND build Julie’s email list, and go straight out to cold audiences. 

Build a Facebook ad campaign to promote your lead magnet

The conversion campaign was built (the conversion being reaching the lead magnet thank you page) and we tested a whole range of factors:

  • Different copy
  • Different images 
  • Different audiences 

Facebook ads are ALL about testing and as we were working on the ads, Julie created a number of image variations:

And whilst all of these reflected the workbook really well, I suggested we also test another image. Throughout my experience of building ad campaigns, I truly believe that what is needed in every campaign is the “traffic stopper” image, and in Julie’s case I felt that I had exactly the image she needed (which is actually a photo of my own puppy, Bear):

In each version of copy, we tweaked the “pain points” and different emotions, so we could get a feel for which message resonated best with Julie’s target audience. 

Test different audiences in your Facebook ad campaign

We trialled Julie’s lookalike audiences (these are audiences created within Facebook – where Facebook takes, for example, the current Facebook page audience and offers up a new audience, generally sized around 500,000+ for a UK audience, of people who closely match the demographics and psychographics of the existing audience). If these audiences hadn’t performed as well as they did then we would also have trialled an entirely new audience, using Julie’s ideal client persona, but to date this hasn’t been necessary.

Sometimes ad campaigns can take a few days to start to gain traction and see results, but Julie’s lead magnet campaign got off to a strong start and very quickly contacts were being added to her email list for £0.31 per sign up, and 22 sign ups in the first day.

What can you expect to pay per lead when using Facebook ads to promote your lead magnet?

I try not to be too specific when clients ask me what they can expect to pay per contact added to their email list as it varies dramatically from industry to industry – and ultimately the end value of each contact also varies. 

If you build an email list and subsequent email campaigns that successfully turn new contacts into clients then paying £0.75 – £1.50 per sign up won’t phase you. However if you add contacts to your list and then don’t nurture them or ultimately sell anything to them, then it’s not money well spent. 

In the first week, Julie gained 190 new contacts and paid £0.12 per sign up. 

Week one lead magnet ad campaign results

In the first month this grew to 858 new contacts, at a cost of £0.11 per sign up.

And now, 6 weeks into the campaign Julie has added a total of 1292 contacts to her list and spent £140.75. 

1292 new email contacts in just six weeks!

What this has created is an email list of over 1200 people who are being nurtured with follow up emails, that add even more value to the lead magnet. But it has also created a website visitors audience of 2500+ – people that have checked out the website so are now considered “warm” and are very likely to be Julie’s ideal customer (why else would they be looking at a dog training website?). 

What happens once you have the contacts on your list?

Julie is now making sales from her email list (on average, you can expect to make a sale from 1-2% of your email list) and is really well positioned to start thinking about a Facebook ad campaign to directly promote and sell her Puppy Love course, the online course for new puppy owners. 

If this has got you thinking about creating a lead magnet for your business, or promoting a lead magnet that you already have, then get in touch and let’s talk!